DINGOES IN THE SHOWER


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Oceania » Australia » Northern Territory » King's Canyon
November 18th 2010
Published: December 4th 2010
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The alarm didn’t go off so we had a rather rushed morning trying to get off site for 10am. Hot and flustered we then had a 4 hour drive in the oven like temperature to Kings Canyon. After much convincing Andy finally agreed to do the 6km walk round the rim of the canyon. The only problem was that we had arrived during the hottest part of the day. As we were getting ready to set off we saw Frank and Manon who were just returning from the same walk. They told us that the first part of the walk was tough but that it was well worth the effort. I knew that the first part included a steep climb up 100m cliff face, but I had decided not to mention this to Andy in fear that it might put him off. As we approached the start Andy noticed some people who had just started the walk in front of us and said “look at those mad people, I wouldn’t want to be rock climbing in this weather” It wasn’t till we reached the bottom of the cliff and the arrows we were following pointed up that he realised we would soon be the mad people climbing up the rocks! It wasn’t so much a climb as a clamber up some very steep steps. Some of the steps were part of the cliff and some of them had been man made. Reaching the top was certainly tough, but we were rewarded with the most stunning views. As we looked over the edge the ground seemed a long way away, quite a frightening sight, high enough to make your legs feel funny. Looking around at our immediate surroundings it felt like we had just climbed 100meters and had now found ourselves on another planet. After a good while walking and climbing at about the half way point we descended into The Garden of Eden. Green trees and brightly coloured flowers grew beside a clear stream which ran to a waterfall flowing into a huge natural pool. All this is surrounded by the towering red walls of the canyon. It was so beautiful that you could have stayed for hours. There was a large group of friends at the waterhole when we arrived. One of the guys was trying to impress a girl in his group by doing the butterfly stroke across the pool. When she didn’t seem that impressed he asked her to take his photo while standing topless in the waterfall, I think he thought he was Peter Andre, in reality he was more Peter Sellers! We had planned on swimming in the waterhole, but all this somewhat spoilt the serenity of the moment. We did stop and dangle our feet in to cool down before tackling the second half of the walk. A short while later we were lucky enough to see a Perentie Lizard clambering up the rock after taking a dip in a small pool. These can grow up to 2.5 meters in length and are not spotted very often . This one was around 1.5 meters and trying to get close enough to take a decent picture was a nervous moment. When a Perentie is alarmed it heads for the protection of the height of a tree. They have been known to mistake standing humans for trees and try to climb up them! Luckily this one was intelligent enough to realise that we were not trees and headed back to safety under some rocks. It took us 3.5 hours to complete the trek and we were pretty tired afterwards, but it was well worth it. So far this had been our favourite day since we had been on the road.

We drove back to the Kings Canyon resort and had a well deserved shower and dinner before meeting up with Frank and Manon again at the sunset viewing point. I know I write allot about watching the amazing sunset, but almost every night the sunset is so stunning and the colours so beautiful that you can’t help but watch and we never tire of them.

There were allot of warning signs on the campsite telling us not to feed the Dingoes… we certainly were not planning on getting close enough to feed one! One Dingo had other plans though and seemed to want to make friends with Andy and followed him to the shower block. The blocks all had gates on them so that the Dingoes couldn’t get in, but this one just stood at the gate and watched! Now had this been a Dingo in the wild I think Andy would have stayed in the toilet block all night, but these ones are used to humans. It didn’t stop him walking out of the door at the other end of the toilet block and giving it a wide berth though - I cant say I blame him!


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